Friday, 27 March 2009

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Over the last couple of days I have noticed people mentioning a viral advert that used sheep with LED's attached to them to recreate images of a fireworks display and retro Atari game pong.

I thought I would check the advert out to see what I had been missing, considering all the attention the advert had been getting.

These are my thoughts after watching the viral advert

The first thing I noticed is the duration of the piece is 2 minutes 44 seconds as general rule viral adverts should not be over 3 minutes (with 2 minutes being an optimal length) already this viral is a little on the long side

The opening titles of the piece introducing the viewer to each sheep hearder and their quirky job (Ermis The Electrcian, Gerry The Player, Rob The LED Master and Bernard, The General) In introducing each character this creates a sense of suspense and makes you want to find out about the characters and what they are about to do.

I did however find some of the time it is not clear what shapes and images the sheep are making.

I also find the ending scene of the video to be a weak point. It ends with the text "With thanks to Samsung Smart LED technology. Look at there LED TVs. Oh go on!" It would have been nice if the had of included a URL or even a search term.

Over all I felt the viral video did not relate to the product enough and did not inspire me to go check out Samsung Smart LED TVs

On the plus side I did find out that the advert was made by The Viral Factory and I will be adding them to my student wiki space of companies I would like to work for, as well as dropping them an e-mail to make them aware of who I am and asking for advice on how to get in to the viral video market

Monday, 23 March 2009

I remember last year (I will add the link asap) writing about a stop motion Cravendale milk advert that caught my attention

Cravendale have done it again

The most striking elements of this advert are there brilliant sound design, and the simplistic approach of the animation

I watched this advert for a second time with out any sound, and discovered that it is actually the sound that it telling the story (try watching the advert with out any sound. It does not flow and makes little sense.)

Being interested in social media I furthered my investigation in to this advert by doing an immediate search on YouTube

I quickly found that the channels "MilkMatters", "CravenDale" and "CravenDaleMilk" were all ready being used by people who appeared not to be from the official Cravendale milk company

It would appear that the Official YouTube Channel for Cravendale milk is http://www.youtube.com/cravendaleUK All though for the casual Internet user it may not be apparent that this is their Official YouTube Channel

If I was doing some consultancy work with Cravendale I would advise them their channel needs to have some of their branding on it so people are easily able to instantly recognize it belongs to them

I have been teaching myself to make YouTube backgrounds in Photoshop so I will possible try to mock a Cravendale YouTube background to demonstrate this.

They should also use their YouTube channel to drive traffic to all the other places that they exist on the web. Providing links in their YouTube profile would be the most simple way to do this.

I notice in this video they have provided a link in the description to drive traffic to a related game on their website

To further my ideas on using social media to promote Cravendale milk if you have read my blog recently you will know I am using DailyBooth I would recommend CravenDale to start using DailyBooth, posting a picture of a milk based drink or product each day. The blub under the picture would be the recipe for the drink or product. They could then encourage people to post a picture comment after they have followed the recipe

Saturday, 21 March 2009

I want graphical elements that represent each piece of software that I use. You will click the "icon" and this will take you through to examples of work I have created with each item of software with a short explanation of each piece of work

I will also include a short bio about myself as well as contact details

I have been putting together a very rough version of this portfolio. I need to tweek the code and source some more icons.

Friday, 20 March 2009

I have succesfully managed to use this app for over a month now. On day 31 (after one month of use) I used the widget that allows you to put all your photographs in to a video

Below is the result. It would be great to get some comments and feedback let me know what you think

On reflection to this video; it is kind a surreal experience watching a month of your life pass before your eyes. Each picture has a unique meaning to me. In a years time I will be able to watch this video and know exactly what I did between February and March. I am really enjoying using this app, it allows me to interact with friends from other social networks in a new and interesting way. I plan on using DailyBooth for the foreseeable future and will be publishing videos at regular intervals.

Thursday, 19 March 2009

My initial thoughts when it came to writing the essay for critical studies was to look in to how broadcasting had changed since the internet has become a medium where news and information is instantly available

I was considering using the title, Broadcasting Past and Present: What Role has the Internet Played?

However I have not made a final decision and after loaning a number of books from the college library I found a couple of topics to that also caught my attention

Culture Jamming

This refers to the activities of challenging the imposition of marketing practices in our public spaces by parodying advertisements and hijacking billboards to seriously alter their messages

Wednesday, 11 March 2009

I not have the roughly lip-synced version of my Animation for the Feel Good Breif

It still needs tidying up a little and the lip syncing still needs some attention but I just wanted to put this online as I like how the fruit characters have developed since I last posted.

Evaluation

Just to evaluate a little bit, one problem I found when lip syncing was the my untrained audio actors dropped certain letters and did not fully pronounce of annunciate words. This lead to some trouble making the animation look as convincing as possible e.g the word "can't" the letter T is not pronounced harsh enough and the word "round" the letter D is pronounced too soft.

In future projects where the spoken word plays such an important role I will pay more attention to the pronunciation. A draft audio will be recorded first. I will listen back to it and see where the actors are dropping letters or not prounouncing things in a way that will let me animate to what they are saying. By creating a rough audio draft and analysing it before going on to create a finial piece it should allow me to achieve a more realistic degree of animation

I have generated these views by being an active member of various social media websites. On most social media website there is a space to add the web communities you belong to. This is how I have generated some of the views on both my blogs

At easter I will have been actively blogging for a year. If I maintain 50 views on my blog each month I would find that to be an acceptable achievement.

Wednesday, 4 March 2009

I just wanted to keep a copy of this on my blog so next time I need to summarise anything (such as a text for critical studies) I have something to refer back to.

What Is Summarizing?Summarizing is how we take larger selections of text and reduce them to their bare essentials: the gist, the key ideas, the main points that are worth noting and remembering. Webster's calls a summary the "general idea in brief form"; it's the distillation, condensation, or reduction of a larger work into its primary notions.

What Are We Doing When We Summarize?We strip away the extra verbiage and extraneous examples. We focus on the heart of the matter. We try to find the key words and phrases that, when uttered later, still manage to capture the gist of what we've read. We are trying to capture the main ideas and the crucial details necessary for supporting them.

When You Ask People to Summarize, What Usually Happens?they write down everythingthey write down next to nothingthey give me complete sentencesthey write way too muchthey don't write enoughthey copy word for word

What Did You Want Them To Do?pull out main ideasfocus on key detailsuse key words and phrasesbreak down the larger ideaswrite only enough to convey the gisttake succinct but complete notes

How Can I Teach My Students to Summarize?Please be warned: teaching summarizing is no small undertaking. It's one of the hardest strategies for students to grasp, and one of the hardest strategies for you to teach. You have to repeatedly model it and give your students ample time and opportunities to practice it. But it is such a valuable strategy and competency. Can you imagine your students succeeding in school without being able to break down content into manageable small succinct pieces? We ask students to summarize all the time, but we're terrible about teaching them good ways to do this!

Here are a few ideas; try one...try them all. But keep plugging away at summarizing. This strategy is truly about equipping your students to be lifelong learners.

After students have used selective underlining on a selection, have them turn the sheet over or close the handout packet and attempt to create a summary paragraph of what they can remember of the key ideas in the piece. They should only look back at their underlining when they reach a point of being stumped. They can go back and forth between writing the summary and checking their underlining several times until they have captured the important ideas in the article in the single paragraph.

Have students write successively shorter summaries, constantly refining and reducing their written piece until only the most essential and relevant information remains. They can start off with half a page; then try to get it down to two paragraphs; then one paragraph; then two or three sentences; and ultimately a single sentence.

Teach students to go with the newspaper mantra: have them use the key words or phrases to identify only Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

Take articles from the newspaper, and cut off their headlines. Have students practice writing headlines for (or matching the severed headlines to) the "headless" stories.

Sum It Up: Pat Widdowson of Surry County Schools in North Carolina shared this very cool strategy with me. How's it work? You have students imagine they are placing a classified ad or sending a telegram, where every word used costs them money. Tell them each word costs 10 cents, and then tell them they can spend "so much." For instance, if you say they have $2.00 to spend, then that means they have to write a summary that has no more than 20 words. You can adjust the amount they have to spend, and therefore the length of the summary, according to the text they are summarizing. Consider setting this up as a learning station, with articles in a folder that they can practice on whenever they finish their work early or have time when other students are still working.